Zorba The Greek

1. I read this book in the 80's for a comparative literature class, and didn't pick up on the Buddhism. At that time I was years away from trying meditation and reading Zen stuff and scratching my head. Unmemorable essays mean I didn't completely engage my meaning systems. 

I'm reading it again and surprised to find Buddhism in the mix in the meditations on liberty. It's not clear what ideas Kazantzakis has about Buddhism. His writing a life of the Buddha is seen as intellectual. Zorba is someone who seems fairly spontaneous and in the moment, seems to try and squeeze all the joys out of life, but he shoots for the middle, not the top or the bottom. The narrator stays up all night writing an essay about Buddhism but doesn't mention it thereafter. Zorba thinks he's too much in his head, but he has interesting art memories, enjoys literature, and likes to think. The novel sets up a duality between learned, and spontaneous, meditating on liberty and freedom, with a side of Buddhism.

I don't believe you really engage with Buddhism unless you meditate. For Kazantzakis, it's unclear the source of his knowledge. He engages at the sort of pop level, the intellectual level, but he's a deep thinker. At least he's thinking about it. 

He tries to be celibate, but without the benefit of meditative states. He's OK during the day, but at night he hungers for companionship. He often leans on his friendship for entertainment, but sometimes Zorba doesn't want to entertain him, play music for him. 

From his wikipedia page: "As he traveled Europe, he was influenced by various philosophers, cultures, and religions, like Buddhism, causing him to question his Christian beliefs." (cite)

2. There was an interesting exchange on Reddit that got deleted. Someone quoted what Zorba said about a Russian guy who expressed himself through dance. The women resisted being raped, but then gave into it with pleasure. Surely that's not woke enough for today's people. But the person was pointing out that perhaps the writer wasn't condoning what Zorba was saying. One little sentence is an amazing book, and a youth feel entitled to cancel the book. Of course rape culture is terrible and assumes perhaps that women even want it, but he's saying that's what a Russian guy said through dance, and Zorba, a character in a novel was reporting it. Since it was reported in a dance, it's probably not very accurate communication and probably Zorba was projecting. I have no desire to defend Zorba, he's not really a hero of mine. But it's an interesting and complex novel. Zorba does have offensive ideas about women. It's part of the character study. Do you want him to get some comeuppance in the novel to show that the writer has a sense of justice? I guess I wouldn't mind, but then it stops being Dionysian and becomes Apollonian. I don't imagine I'll get my ideas about woman from Zorba. The larger point of Zorba is that men are alienated from their bodies. And who's to say if you aren't alienated from your body that you can't communicate through dance. The narrator sees Zorba as a relic of the past, that is not apt for modern times (published 1946, it will be even more so for our current times.) But he also admires his spontaneity, the easy joy he has, unfettered by anxiety or qualms.

3. Zorba is a sexist git. He has rape fantasies, and he thinks he's god's gift to women. He preys on lonely widows. He is not to be read during since we have had the #metoo era. He is an obsolete kind of hero.

4. Zorba is very tender towards women. He tells the story of his grandmother. The local guys would come and serenade the beautiful young woman across the street, and she thought it was for her. Zorba relieved her of this dream, and apparently she went downhill and died very quickly after that. She said he killed her. I think of that line from Sheryl Crow song, "lie to me, I promise to believe."

5. Zorba is the Buddha because he has beginners mind. He looks at narcissi as though for the first time. He considers wine as though for the first time. He is integrated with his body and can communicate still through dance. He can smell a book waffler a mile away. He gets absorbed in his activities, to the exclusion of all else. The concentration is seen as similar to the Buddha. 

6. He thinks everything is alive. That's an animist. I kind of like that because it would naturally lead to environmentalism, IMHO. 

7. He says if you look at water with a magnifying glass, you'll see all the worms in it. He sees the narrator as dying of thirst because of intellectualism. He's cultured, he reads, writes, and went to museums all over Europe. 

8. Page 182 he mentions meditation but it seems to be thinking about a book he's reading. But the book came out in 1946, and I am sure it was revolutionary in it's way of considering Buddhism, as flawed and minimal as it is.

9. Zorba talks about starting Zeus Marriage Agency. He would pay guys to go sleep with the undesirable women. He says if he can't find anyone, he will go himself. That got me thinking about the 37 vows of a Bodhisattva. There's a suggestion that a Bodhisattva would sleep with ugly women to make them happy.

10. This book reminds me of the bawdy novel Thom Jones. It's a rollicking, make the most of life type novel. People who live close to the edge. I could see the Beats liking the novel.

11. I don't really agree with Zorba's ideas about manhood, I've never really felt any pull of concepts of gender. My male role models couldn't fix their cars. I know women in my past wished I was more protective, or took more financial responsibility. Every time I've played the lusty fellow is wasn't so much appreciated. 

I have worked with the transgender, and felt deep sorrow at their plights and persecution. The murder rates are high, the early death rates are high. Once a year they read all the names of the people who have died at City Hall in NYC. The list feels too long.

I myself could never imagine trying to mutilate my body to be like a different gender. Even though I'm not a stereotypical man I have no desire to switch to be a woman. To me if feels like I need to adjust to being in the body of a man. When I was young the call to adventure made me brave, and that was perhaps manly. In middle age, I became caring and supportive. I can see how modern times expects you to be relational all the time instead of competitive and individualistic, and that it would be an advantage to be a woman now. I wish my body was desirable and could give pleasure the way a woman's body does. The tragedy of male sexuality is something I could do without. I never wished to somehow switch genders, though I am quite accepting of my "female" side. I feel sorry for a transgender person who wants to be recognized as the opposite gender they were born with. Their performance is sad at best, convincing at worst. 

The anti-transgender perspective (TERF) don't want to be kind. The chief complaint as far as I can tell is the aggressive sexuality of the Male to Females, who they feel invade their female sex spaces. Sex as opposed to gender is not something they claim can be changed. Men as women still have aggressive sexuality, and the demand to be wanted is not appreciated. Don't enter female space with male aggression dressed as a woman. The MtF Transwomen feel unjustly excluded, what more can they do? Feels like an intractable conflict.

I used to focus more on the tragedy of being transgender, but some focus on the aggressiveness of being told they have to want them.  They reject that. I didn't really like the aggression of being told I wanted them. They can be attractive, I don't begrudge them that, but I was not attracted to them in general. I'm attracted to people not gender, and the obsession of gender performance is the opposite of what I want: Gender irrelevance. I don't like men who embrace masculinity or women who embrace femininity. I like the new indeterminate character on Star Trek. But I get it that transgender want to cleave towards the opposite of what they are born. To me it feels more ideological than real, and I'm sure that's a barrier in my empathy. There are so many ways in which we have to adapt to the world. I suppose it's a marvel of modern technology that we don't have to do that with gender. 

Women as men are not as offensive. Go ahead and be that way if you want to. Chop off the meaty fun bags, take the hormone. Pump some iron. You're not going to have a functioning penis, which is of dubious use anyway. Lesbians are better at making women come than men are. Anyway, strapons exist. You've gone the wrong way in the zeitgeist. We need to be more empathetic and relational. Manhood is obsolete. I'm not saying we don't need support or that we can't feel male pride. We just don't need super macho hunters, and super macho men seem tragic nowadays. Zorba seems an exaggeration now, a way of being that time has passed. He does not deny his desires, and seems to live life to fullest, I like that. There is a sort of integration and beginners mind. But in terms of gender performance, he's obsolete. I know there are women who wants that, want men more macho, don't agree with their taming. Mostly they can't function in our society, which is just a small fraction of why it's so hard to function in our current society. I guess an update on Zorba would be to confront a transgender male to female, and even a female to male. What would Zorba make of that? It would probably jam his pagan mind.

12. When I was a therapist, I believed in people's experience. If you tell me a ghost picked you up in the street, then I believed that is your experience. I don't contradict people and say ghosts don't exist. That would make things worse. If someone says they're in the wrong sex body, then I believed that was the best description of what someone was experiencing. My above meditation is not to void transgender experience, it's to express my experience. People can't blot out other people with their experience, because everyone's experience is valid as their experience. My heart goes out to the transgender.

13. Shaking off Christianity's prudery is a goal of some Buddhists, to work to integrate it beyond Christian judgements, and eventually rise above it. The pagan Zorba may in some way point to some of the working out of it. Zorba's integration with his body is perhaps to be admired. He can communicate by dance, how many people can say that, even if it's self reported?

14. In the end, I'm sure in 1946 it was a very Buddhist literature book, but today in 2020 it's not very insightful into Buddhism. The world has quite evolved in terms of the western appreciation of Buddhism. The western appreciation is skewed away from magic and miracles, perfect knowledge and Christian terminology, skewed towards meditation, even as more Buddhists are Pure Land and chant instead of meditation. Chanting is meditative. I know it is for me when I do it. But they are Buddhists and they don't dominate the Reddits because they're more other powered and most vocal Buddhists are fleeing from the blind faith of Christianity. Zorba understands with more than his head, which is all the narrator can understand Buddhism as he tries to write about it. 

15. He does pick out beginner's mind perhaps before that was a term. Zorba has a kind of integration, aliveness, and energy. And I do quite enjoy the friendship in the novel. 

16. It's terrible they cut off the head of the widow. That it's not really explained makes it more troublesome. I worry over it. They killed her because she slept with the boss? That is terrible. They owned her sexuality? I guess it's to emphasize the horribleness of a small village on Crete. Their brutality. Then Bouboulina dies, and they ransack her home before she is even cold. Quite terrible. The fantasy of Americans is that Europe is more civilized, but of course A Portrait of a Lady puts that to bed. The novel is filled with Cretan customs and ways of being.

17. "I felt deep within me that the highest point man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!" (p.269)

18. Women get more pleasure from giving pleasure to men, than the pleasure she gets from men? Zorba says that. I don't know about that. That sounds more like a male fantasy. And everyone, male or female get pleasure from other's pleasure.

19. Quite a touching friendship.